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Comment by GhettoComputers | Hacker News Reader

IoT I can safely say that running a heavy OS is not the best way to do so. Most IoT are lighter, cheaper, use less power and smaller. Using a computer with an OS for IoT is rarely a good idea from what I seen. He said he used ESP32 instead, so they can do the same thing.

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What's "an IoT"?

Same as always, it depends on what you are doing. As soon as you have a non-trivial display, data-processing needs, anything involving video or expectations of expanding features later, going to an MCU is a serious compromise and/or additional expense during development at best.

Does it make sense to put a Linux system in a light bulb? very likely not. Does it make sense making your product harder to use and dependent on a Linux server somewhere else just so you can avoid using a system powerful enough to do on-board data processing and get away with an MCU? Also probably not. I see plenty companies learning how to do embedded Linux because their purely microcontroller-based designs don't cut it anymore for what they want to do today.

Usually it’s sensors and it does usually make sense unless it’s also processing the data, IoT is usually simple switches. Aside from graphics such as video streaming off the top of my head, processing the data is not often useful aside from machine vision.

I’m not a big fan of IoT, although Linux based advantages are a good repository of software, familiarity if your a Linux/Unix user, and easy deployment/prototyping.

Depends on your product and industry. At low volumes you can get an app running on a Pi quickly. And it already has wifi and bluetooth. Plus lots of available expansion boards. Power is usually not a concern for industrial equipment.

The Pi Zero and Pi Zero W were used in a ton of IoT devices.

Unless you’re comparing it to an arduino, many other boards like ESPs have WiFi or WiFi and BT as well, and aren’t hard to get it running quickly. The zero has no wireless as far as I remember.

What were the zero and pi zero w used in?

I've seen a few product for industrial monitoring use the Pi Zero W.

That’s pretty different from ‘a ton’ and I doubt the zero is used meaningfully in iot. I’m trying to think of a scenario where the pi is better than an embedded system, it seems like overkill or overtly complicated to need Linux to monitor this stuff unless it’s also computing it before sending the data, maybe in thinking about it wrong? IoT and edge computing are what I generally think of, and something like Pi I see as a hub.

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